Edible Pool Filling

Proposed By: zarpaulus on May 13th 2018 at 8:45:59 AM Last Edited By: zarpaulus on May 24th 2018 at 6:49:44 PM

Name Space: MainPage Type: trope

What does every moderately wealthy person need to have these days? A swimming pool is often on the list. But if you're really rich why fill it with boring old water? Why not gelatin, or pudding, or booze?

The real reason is that most consumables would clog up the filters pools use to keep the water clean and you can't really swim that easily in something like gelatin.

Examples:

Film - Animated

In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, one of the many jell-o constructs Flint makes is a swimming pool full of the stuff. Deconstructed when he and Sam go to use the thing, though... Flint smacks against the surface of the pool due to not having enough momentum, while Sam punctures it and ends up about three feet down... and stays there.

Literature

An iconic scene from every version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the chocolate river, which Willy Wonka claims is a key part of the mixing process. In a bit of a subversion though he gets angry when somebody dips his hands in it and falls in, but has no problem running a boat on it.

Live Action TV

In The Last Man on Earth, Phil fills an inflatable kiddie pool with tequila and lime juice and makes himself a margarita pool.

The Mythbusters once filled a pool with syrup to test the myth that you can swim through it as easily as water.

Web Animation

The Strong Bad Email "Winter Pool" featured Strong Bad and Homestar filling up a pool with gelatin. Reality Ensues when they end up sinking to the bottom, forcing The King of Town to suck up the whole thing in order to rescue them.

For Free Fall, Randall assumes that there's a pit at the bottom of the cliff filled with something to safely break one's fall, like cotton candy.

In Lake Tea, Alex asks how strong would a tea made from dumping all the world's tea into the Great Lakes be. "Weak, bordering on homeopathic.", answers Randall. He concludes, however, that by dumping 2700 tons of tea into Frying Pan Lake when it's particularly hot, one could brew a year's worth of tea in minutes.

Western Animation

In one episode of American Dad! where Steve briefly became fantastically wealthy, he filled a pool with jello. Into which Roger shoved Steve's lookalike, causing him to asphyxiate.

In the late-series episode "All Eds Are Off", Ed drops his box of instant gravy mix in the community swimming pool, turning the water into gravy.

In the episode Knock Knock Who's Ed?, the Eds try making a pool full of lime-flavored gelatin to capitalize on the summer-heat. Unfortunately, it seems that Edd has underestimated the viscosity of the gelatin, and the pool is simply a large, quivering mound of the stuff. To make matters worse, Ed drinks the pool, leaving him and his friends scamless.

Spongebob Squarepants: The Patty Vault in the back of Krusty Krab contains mountains of Krabby Patty which Squidward (who recently gets addicted on it) swims in while eating it by the dozens.

The Phineas and Ferb episode "Day of the Living Gelatin" has the boys making the world's largest gelatin dessert by filling a swimming pool with as many boxes of gelatin as they can get. Unfortunately the massive gelatin gets hit with Doofenshmirtz's Turn-Everything-Evil-inator which turns it into an evil monster.

Real Life

The last emperors of China's semi-mythical Xia and Shang dynasties are alleged to have built artificial lakes filled with wine, among other forms of decadence at the taxpayers' expense that led to their downfalls.

There's a concept, I think it's been used on both Brainiacs and Mythbusters, used to demonstrate that it is possible to walk on water if you mix enough of some other stuff into the water first. Can't recall off hand what was used in the American version, but the British pop-science show Brainiacs experimented by filling a swimming pool full of custard. The theory is that while custard remains a liquid, it is possible for somebody to run across the top of it, if they keep moving quickly. Something about non-newtonian fluids, apparently. Custard (Creme anglais) is of course a sweet egg-based sauce poured over desserts.

The Strong Bad Email "Winter Pool" featured Strong Bad and Homestar filling up a pool with gelatin. Reality Ensues when they end up sinking to the bottom, forcing The King of Town to suck up the whole thing in order to rescue them.

In Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, one of the many jell-o constructs Flint makes is a swimming pool full of the stuff. Deconstructed when he and Sam go to use the thing, though... Flint smacks against the surface of the pool due to not having enough momentum, while Sam punctures it and ends up about three feet down... and stays there.

For Free Fall, Randall assumes that there's a pit at the bottom of the cliff filled with something to safely break one's fall, like cotton candy.

In Lake Tea, Alex asks how strong would a tea made from dumping all the world's tea into the Great Lakes be. "Weak, bordering on homeopathic.", answers Randall. He concludes, however, that by dumping 2700 tons of tea into Frying Pan Lake when it's particularly hot, one could brew a year's worth of tea in minutes.

In the Ed Edd N Eddy episode Knock Knock Who's Ed?, the Eds try making a pool full of lime-flavored gelatin to capitalize on the summer-heat. Unfortunately, it seems that Edd has underestimated the viscosity of the gelatin, and the pool is simply a large, quivering mound of the stuff. To make matters worse, Ed drinks the pool, leaving him and his friends scamless.

The Phineas And Ferb episode "Day of the Living Gelatin" has the boys making the world's largest gelatin dessert by filling a swimming pool with as many boxes of gelatin as they can get. Unfortunately the massive gelatin gets hit with Doofenshmirtz's Turn-Everything-Evil-inator which turns it into an evil monster.

Not A Trope. The description suggests that to have a pool filled with anything other than water is a narrative sign of being wealthy... most of the examples are either not that or have no (good) context. In any case, that sounds absurd, perhaps if its an Idle RichMan Child then having a hot tub of mac n cheese would make sense, but I'm not sure that's ever happened in media. Not that using a pool of random food or drink is a common indicator of wealth, anyway. Perhaps it would be tropeable if it was limited to something luxurious, like "I'm so rich I bathe in liquid gold" or "... in expensive champagne" or "...it's really caviar", or "...it's edible Belgian truffle water, even though it's transparent". Obviously related to jumping into a mountain of gold coins and rolling around in bills. As-is, it's bad.

And, yes, without the qualifier of the "indicates wealth", it's just a pool filled with food, which bears no narrative significance besides being bizarre. You could re-tool it into "quirky characters are unaware of the bizarreness" or "little kids try to make/have a dream about swimming in a pool of their favourite food".

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